Can Social Media Create Value for Businesses?

Interesting research report from Olgilvy on Social Media creating value for businesses. From the executive summary:

Ogilvy and ChatThreads enlisted approximately 400 US restaurant consumers who tracked and reported 5,295 touch points with five restaurant brands across all major types of media….

What did we find?

1. Social media exposure is directly linked with increases in sales. Integrated social media (social content + one or more other channels) exposure is linked with significant increases in spend and consumption—for example, social media + PR exposure was associated with a 17% spend increase compared to the prior week without these.

2. Integration matters. Exposure to social content was most consistently effective when it was combined with exposure to other types of media channels.

3. Social media is a top driver of impact. Out of the 20 channels analyzed, social media was No. 1 or No. 2 in magnitude of impact on spend and consumption.

4. Social media exposure is directly linked with changes in brand perception. Social media by itself is particularly effective at rapidly impacting brand perception— exposure to social media generated the largest impact on brand perception over a short (one week) period of time.

5. Brand exposure in social media is low. Weekly social media exposure to brand mentions was relatively low (24% of panel) vs. television branded exposure (69% of panel), even in this selected high social media consumption group of consumers

How does your business use social media?

In an effort to gain more insight into the usage of social media by marketers, product marketers and product managers, we have a quick survey for you to participate in. The survey should only take like 2 minutes, so your input is appreciated!

Here’s the Survey: https://survey.vovici.com/se.ashx?s=3877A95112A62085

Survey ends Friday 10.28